Playing the Game (27 page)

“Jay.” Henry commanded immediate attention. “Go and fetch a washcloth, please, and the arnica cream I set out on the counter.”

“Yes, Henry.” Jay kissed Henry’s shoulder and Alice’s cheek before he rolled away and off the bed.

She pushed, gently, against Henry’s chest, and he let her go, though not far. She pulled the sheet up and lay on her stomach, flinching when the fabric settled on sensitive skin.

He rolled onto his side and dipped his head to catch her eyes. “Tell me why it disturbs you, sweet girl.”

“I liked it. I did.” She didn’t want him to think she hadn’t. That she wouldn’t have told him to stop if she’d needed him to. That he couldn’t trust her. “But…why do I like it when it’s so wrong?”

“Did you ask that of your previous partners, Alice?”

“No, of course not. They never–we didn’t play these games. You know that.” He’d seen the extent of her experience from her contract answers. He’d interrogated her about them for hours.

“And if we weren’t playing these games, if Jay and I had simply told you we enjoy engaging in sex with men as well as women, would you have asked why we like it when it’s so wrong?”

“God no, that’s not–Jesus, Henry. There’s nothing wrong with having same-sex partners.”

He laughed, quietly, and squeezed her hand. “You’re very young, Alice. The decade between us is a significant one in this case. I assure you, when I reached puberty and discovered my interests were not limited by gender considerations, the majority of people did, in fact, believe there was something wrong with homosexuality.”

“Were you bullied?” She squeezed back. Was that why he enjoyed being in charge? Because he’d been victimized before?

He shook his head, a small smile on his lips. “No, Alice. You’re seeking a reason, an explanation for where things have gone wrong. Have you considered such a rationale doesn’t exist?”

“Well…it’s not normal, is it? What we’re doing? I mean, I liked it. Tonight. But it was painful. I shouldn’t like that. So why…” She shrugged. “Just why?”

“Why do we do it, you mean?” Henry’s tone was light. “What damage must we carry that makes us react to such stimuli in a sexual fashion?”

She turned on her side and curled her body into a ball, tucking her legs to her chest. The movement stretched her back, pulling at the places where he’d flogged her. She was sore now, but the game had felt good in the moment. Amazingly good.

“Yeah, that, I guess. I don’t feel like I had a damaged childhood or something, but…”

“But mainstream psychology and social mores about sexuality have given you the impression that what you desire is something forbidden and therefore something must be wrong with you.”

“Aww, man, you’re giving her the psych talk, Henry? And I’m missing it? Did I miss the good bits?”

She craned her head over her shoulder to watch Jay saunter into the bedroom, naked as a jaybird.

“What, you got this talk, too? I would’ve figured psychology was way over your head.”

“Ha-ha. You’re a comedian. Guess who won’t be getting this soothing cream rubbed into her aching backside?” He waggled a small jar held delicately in one hand, a washcloth in the other.

“Like you could resist putting your hands on my ass.” She smirked at him, sticking her tongue out for emphasis.

“Oh, I’ll put hands on your ass, all right.” Jay hopped onto the bed, dropping the jar to the pillow, and yanked at the sheets. She held on tight and rolled toward Henry. The move overbalanced Jay, sending him sprawling across her back.

“Ow. Ow, ow, ow,” Alice yelped.

Jay propelled himself backward so quickly that he tumbled off the end of the bed.

“Owww. That hurt.” Jay rested his chin on the bed, one hand rubbing his head.

Henry sighed.

“Now that you’ve gone and hurt yourselves, if you two children are done teasing each other…” Despite his dry tone, his smile was tolerant, amused. He wouldn’t be so if they’d truly hurt each other, but he otherwise seemed fond of their exuberance.

She pulled herself forward on her elbows and kissed his cheek.

“That’s why we leave you in charge of playtime. Jay and I would make a mess of things.”

A delicate dip in the mattress and fingertips ghosting across her ankle marked Jay’s silent return.

Henry’s gaze flashed past her shoulder. He nodded once before returning his attention to her. “Ah, you see, Alice? You do know what’s ‘wrong’ with you. You’re playful, inexperienced and overeager. It’s a recipe for disaster. Thank heavens we found you when we did. Who knows what trouble you might have gotten into otherwise.”

“You’re teasing me.” She gasped. Jay had chosen the right moment to press the washcloth to her sex.

Henry’s smile turned sly. “It
is
part of my contractual obligations to you, dearest.”

“Not verbally, it isn’t.” Her legs relaxed. Jay’s gentle strokes seemed almost an apology for his earlier tumble.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Alice. Of course it is.” Henry arched his right eyebrow. “Or would you deny that you come so sweetly when I speak to you of all the ways in which Jay and I shall debauch you?”

She flushed red, and the heated welts across her ass and thighs throbbed. The washcloth went away.

“You know I won’t deny that. I promised I wouldn’t lie to you. That’s part of
my
contract.”

“Mmm. For your own safety and enjoyment, dear one.”

She hissed and burrowed into the mattress at the first touch of cold on her backside. Jay’s hands, spreading the soothing cream over her welts.

“So you’re saying nothing’s wrong with me.”

“I’m saying there isn’t necessarily anything ‘wrong’ in your past that has somehow caused you to accept aberrant or deviant sexual practices as normal, Alice. You may simply like these things, as I do. That’s not to say you won’t meet some for whom the impetus is different. Some who struggle with self-loathing. Some who have suffered abuse. Some whose sexual responses have been negatively influenced by life events.”

Henry reached out and cupped her face, his fingers warm and gentle, pushing her hair behind her ear before moving off.

“I was neither neglected nor abused, Alice. And if I am a disappointment to my mother, it is only because I have not given her grandchildren, a situation I feel my older brother has well in hand. That I enjoy planning scenes, providing a safe outlet for healthy sexual desires and lavishing attention and affection on you and Jay might indicate that I am an analytical, obsessive caretaker, nothing more.”

She crossed her arms under her head, enjoying the comfort brought both by Jay’s hands and Henry’s words. “And me?” She crooked an eyebrow. “And Jay?”

“Jay’s story is his to tell, if he chooses. As for you, my dear, I’m still tunneling into the depths of your thoughts. I would say, thus far, that you enjoy pleasing others and a firm hand, that you are generous and inventive, and that you dislike disharmony and distance.” Henry slid closer, until his warm bulk lay beside her, and he kissed the tip of her nose. “You’re a cuddler.”

Jay’s hands slipped away from her thighs. The slight
clunk
to her right had to be him setting the jar on the nightstand before lying beside her. Mirroring Henry’s pose, from the heat along her right side. He was warmer than Henry, pressing in close like an overgrown puppy and nuzzling her neck.

“Plus, you taste great. I can confirm that a thousand times over. I can’t believe you didn’t mention that, Henry. It’s a tragic omission.”

She laughed, happy and content lying between the two men in her life. But Jay’s avoidance hadn’t escaped her. Pressing her head back, she pushed at his teasingly. “You gonna share?”

“Who, me?” His words came mumbled between kisses to her neck. “What, are you hungry for more so soon? I thought Henry had you pretty wiped out.”

“Not that, you horndog. Your story.” She affected a cultured, literary tone, an imitation of one of her college professors. “Why you
are
the way you
are
, darling boy.” She returned to her normal voice and rolled her head to face Jay. “Or at least how you met Henry. It’s a love story, right? I bet it’s hugely romantic.”

Jay’s kisses stopped. “It’s…I…I made a pile of bad choices.”

Shit. She’d just totally stepped in it.

“But then I met Henry. Now I let him make all the choices.” Jay nipped at her ear, his playful mood, or the veneer of it, restored. “And that works so much better.”

She couldn’t disagree. Everything worked so much better with Henry in charge of it. If Jay didn’t want to talk about his bad choices, it wasn’t her place to make him. She wasn’t his lover. She was probably here to entertain him. To teach him something? Was that what Henry had been doing tonight? Was the lesson related to Jay’s bad choices? Even if it was, she wouldn’t get answers tonight.

Chapter 10

Alice woke at her normal time Friday morning even though she didn’t have to. The company had given everyone off for the Thanksgiving holiday. Which was fine. Nice.

Except she didn’t have Christmas shopping to do, and she didn’t have leftover turkey to stuff her face with. And Henry’s car still wasn’t back in its space.

She knew from her Tuesday lunch with Jay that they were visiting family. He’d said something about driving up to New Hampshire on Wednesday night, and she hadn’t seen Henry’s car since. But Jay hadn’t said anything about skipping their Friday. In fact, he’d made a point of saying he’d be sure he was back by Friday night.

She stood in her bathrobe at eight in the morning, looking out her window and waiting for that space to fill up. Eleven hours.

“I am not going to sit at home all day and wait for sex.” She said it cautiously, testing the words. They sounded right.

Even if sex was what she wanted. A shower by herself was not bad, but a shower with the memory of Henry’s marathon night of sex four weeks ago was–good God, that man could fuck. He hadn’t let her leave until after breakfast the next morning. Insisted if he was going to keep her awake all night burning calories he was going to replenish them, too.

But she hadn’t seen Jay at all that time, and neither of them had fucked her two weeks ago after her flogging. Henry had insisted she stay overnight again, so he could be certain she’d taken no lasting harm from what he’d called impact play. Jay had seemed too rattled for sex, and Henry hadn’t asked either of them for anything. He’d cuddled them close and talked until they’d fallen asleep.

She’d been reluctant to let sleep take hold, wanting to listen a little longer as he described the slick, rocky shoreline he’d explored as a child. Watching sailboats bobbing in the bay, their triangular sails falling slack or snapping tight as the wind’s moods demanded. Listening to the scratch of his mother’s charcoal pencils as she sketched. He’d been seven that summer, and he’d filled his first sketchbook with drawings of the bay and the boats and his mother.

“It’s important to capture such moments before they pass us by,” he’d murmured as Alice’s eyelids fell and refused to rise again. “To let every stroke, every line, carry the weight of the love one has for the beauty in the subject.”

She’d dreamed of child-Henry that night, his green eyes flashing like the sunlight off the waves. That and the painting hanging in the hallway, the one of Jay’s naked back from the tops of his shoulders to the curve of his spine just above his beautiful ass. Was that Henry’s love, on display, where Jay could see it every time he passed?

If romantic love existed, truly existed, not convenience or polite fictions, it had to be what Henry and Jay shared.

“And even then, they still fuck other people sometimes.” She leaned her right shoulder against the window frame. “Like me. So how great could love be, if it still isn’t enough?”

Six weeks without having Jay inside her. Not since his final exam. She smirked. No wonder he’d been eager to promise he’d be back in time for tonight. Hell, she was equally eager.

She’d never been so obsessed with sex before. Even when she and Adam had been fucking like rabbits those two years at college, she hadn’t replayed their fuckfests in her head as fantasy fuel. Hadn’t woken up with his name on her lips. Hadn’t been desperate for Friday night to arrive so she could get him inside her again.

The pre-Henry-and-Jay era of her sex life was looking even more awkward and unsatisfying than she’d already deemed it. Pathetic. Maybe if she met an interesting guy Henry would be willing to vet him. Give him some prep work. Because Henry knew what to do, and he wasn’t shy about telling
her
what to do.